Radio This Week Back Then #43: November 10-16
KDGE "the Edge" D/FW (early years and 2016 sign off), KRQT "Rocket 107" Houston, KKRD Wichita, KZII "Z102" Lubbock, KTAM Bryan/College Station
What was on the radio this week…back then. This is a weekly visit of radio audio from this week in past years for those that enjoy radio history, those working in radio looking for promotional ideas, or stations looking to re-find lost audio of their heritage. If you enjoy these weekly audio rewinds, they take a lot of time to put together, so please do me a favor, subscribe, and share and pass it on. Thank you! A searchable and sortable index of all the audio is located on the Aircheck Index page.
In this week’s edition, airchecks include the early years of D/FW’s KDGE “the Edge” and its sign-off a quarter century later, Houston’s short-lived “Rocket 107” KRQT, and a couple of stations not yet covered in previous editions in Wichita, Lubbock, and Bryan/College Station.
D/FW | modern rock KDGE 94.5 “94.5 the Edge” (1991) and KDGE 102.1 “102-1 the Edge” (2016 sign off)
Houston | modern rock KRQT 107.5 “Rocket 107” (1994)
Wichita | CHR KKRD 107.3 (1988)
Lubbock | CHR KZII 102.5 “Z102” (1991)
Bryan/College Station | classic rock KTAM 1240 (1990)
Happy reading and listening!
Related: Dallas/Fort Worth, KDGE, 94.5 Dallas/Fort Worth
KDGE first signed on 30 June 1989 on the rimshot 94.5 facility, licensed to Gainesville TX, well north of D/FW near the Texas/Oklahoma border.
This aircheck from this week in 1991 comes after two years into the format. As Clear Channel, now iHeart, was rapidly growing through acquisitions, it found itself over the 5 FM market cap and needed to divest a property in 2000. The choice was easy: unload the rimshot 94.5 facility and keep 5 full market signals from the D/FW FM and TV tower farm in Cedar Hill in southwest Dallas County. In November 2000, it spun off 94.5 to Radio One, but opted to keep the KDGE calls and intellectual property, which it relocated to the stronger 102.1 facility that was home to rhythmic oldies KTXQ. Radio One picked up the KTXQ calls and rhythmic oldies format for its new 94.5 property.
KDGE would continue on 102.1 for 16 years…ending this week back in 2016 (see next section below).
Related: Dallas/Fort Worth, KDGE, 102.1 Dallas/Fort Worth
This week in 2016 came the end of the 27 year run of “the Edge.” For 27 years, it did not get much of a send off. At 3PM on 16 November 2016, KDGE alternated a few times between Semisonic’s “Closing Time” and R.E.M.’s “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” and then began running just a loop of just “Closing Time” for a day, becoming AC “Star 102.1” on the 17th, initially running all-Christmas music. Between songs, liners promised “the sound of 102-1 the Edge” would move to sister KEGL 97.1. It really didn’t as KEGL remained active rock with a few more alternative rock tracks added. The “102-1 the Edge” handle did move to an automated modern rock format on the 102.1HD2 subchannel.
During the endless looping of “Closing Time,” outraged “Edge” listeners took to then-Twitter to complain, except they often tagged the wrong “102.1 the Edge” — CFNY 102.1 Toronto. CFNY finally posted it wasn’t them and a map showing where Dallas and Toronto were located.
Despite the “Star” handle, iHeart has continued to warehouse the KDGE calls on 102.1 in order to prevent them from being used elsewhere in the market.
Related: Houston, 107.5 Houston
If playing a radio version of “Jeopardy!” and the answer was “Houston’s first modern rocker,” you might be tempted to say “What is KRQT?” And you would be partially correct… As covered in this Substack in RTWBT #23, KNRJ 96.5 was technically the first when it flipped from modern rock/dance hybrid “Energy 96.5” to modern rock “96.5, Houston's Alternative Music Source” on the morning of 25 June 1990 (the format flip audio is in that edition). However, it was just a temporary filler until hot AC KHMX “Mix 96.5” was ready to go, which it did a month later.
Classic rock KZFX “Z107.5”’s flip to modern rock “Rocket 107” on Halloween 1994 was the first attempt at an actual new format rather than an interim placeholder. KRQT may not be well-remembered as it only existed just shy of 6 months — the modern rock format was rebranded as KTBZ “107.5 the Buzz” the following April. KTBZ has been running continuously since then — though now on the better 94.5 facility these days as classic hits KLDE 94.5 and modern rock KTBZ 107.5 swapped dial positions on 18 July 2000. Again, like with KDGE above in Dallas, Clear Channel found itself with a surplus of signals and the 107.5 signal is site-restricted to the south, so it was unloaded it and moved the KTBZ format and calls to the full market 94.5 facility.
This aircheck comes just shy of two weeks after the Z107 to Rocket 107 flip. Imagining is on par with what other 1994-era modern rock outlets — and 1994-era modern rock-leaning CHR WHTZ “Z100” was running at the time. “Tune in your head…” Also on this aircheck: bonus points for playing Bush/”Everything Zen” unedited back then. It’s hard to find a radio station today that doesn’t edit out “asshole” in the lyric “…find my asshole brother…” at the start of the song.
In the weeks following the launch, liners took aim at both KRBE 104.1, which had evolved to a modern-rock leaning CHR, and AOR KLOL 101.1. The references to KLOL and its morning team, Stevens and Pruett, including calling both the station and the morning show hosts “old.” The references to KRBE were along the lines of it being a radio station “with acne and braces.” Of the two, KRBE became the more direct competitor as in 1995 it had lurched essentially into being a modern rocker with a few crossover pop tracks for a while (listen to audio from then in RTWBT #5).
From 1983-2004, KKRD ran a CHR format, initially competing against CHR KEYN 103.7. KKRD would win the battle as KEYN flipped to its present day classic hits format in 1989 to end that rivalry.
This aircheck comes from this week in 1988 on a Friday shift change from PM drive to nights with DJ JJ Jeffries. Whitney Houston may have rejected recording ”Waiting For A Star To Fall,” but KKRD liked Boy Meets Girl’s sugary, guilty pleasure earworm version of it enough to play it twice in under 15 minutes on this aircheck.
Presently, the station is modern rock KTHR “Alt 107.3.” The KTHR calls are a holdover from when KKRD dropped CHR in 2004 and became classic rock “107.3 the Road” under those calls.
The KZII calls on 102.5 date back to 27 March 1986, when the station changed calls from KFYO-FM. I could on rare instances pick them up from my home just north of Dallas (300+ miles from Lubbock) in the late 1980s…back when the D/FW radio dial was fairly wide open, including the 102.5 spot on the dial that usually allowed for a fringe signal of KJNE 102.5 (now KBRQ) Hillsboro-Waco to fade in and out during the day. I actually recorded this aircheck late, late one night from my then apartment in far north Dallas when KZII managed to come in and the signal held to roll tape.
The Z102 handle lasted just over 20 years. KZII’s top 40 format was rebranded to its present day “102.5 Kiss FM” brand in March 2009.
KTAM made the flip to classic hits “Classic Hits 1240 KTAM” in the spring of 1986. KTAM remained a full-service outlet with lots of Texas A&M University and local sports programming. With the flip to classic hits, long-time CHR KRBE 104.1 Houston personality Roger WWW Garrett began hosting mornings. He would go on to having a very long run hosting mornings at sister country KORA-FM 98.3. In the 1980s, you could still run a music format on AM and staff it with live and local DJs.
By fall, KTAM added a TV simulcast when LPTV K28AK 28 Bryan signed on the air — basically a 24 hour video feed of the on-duty DJ in the studio with the KTAM audio as the sound. It was sort of like a studio webcam — in a time pre-dating home Internet access or anyone knowing what a webcam was. That simulcast ended a couple of years later after new Fox affiliate KWKT 44 Waco signed on the air and K28AK became a LPTV satellite to import the Fox programming into the Bryan/College Station metro since KWKT’s signal did not reach either city.
Other changes to KTAM at the time included that it and sister KORA-FM 98.3 were purchased by Clear Channel in 1987. Clear Channel, at the time was headed by L Lowry Mays, who was a member of the Texas A&M University board of regents at the time (and whose name is on the A&M School of Business today). Clear Channel would spin off KTAM and KORA-FM a few years later due to national ownership caps at the time that limited ownership to 1 AM and 1 FM in 12 markets across the US … and Clear Channel had eyes on getting into much larger markets than B/CS, which was around market #220 in terms of market size at the time (it’s now market #185 and moving up). Once the mid-1990s ownership caps were relaxed, Clear Channel re-entered the market and bought stations one at a time to assemble the current iHeart cluster of country KAGG 96.1, classic rock KNFX-FM 99.5, CHR KVJM 103.1, and hot AC KKYS 104.7.
According to a 28 January 1987 article in the local Bryan-College Station Eagle, KTAM and KORA-FM were sold to Clear Channel for $4.8 million. Let’s ponder that for a second. An AM/FM combo in the ~220th largest radio market sold for the equivalent of $13.6M in 2024 dollars.
During its initial years running classic hits, KTAM played oldies during the day and shifted to classic rock at night. This aircheck from 1990 is from the nightly classic rock programming. Also dating myself is that I recorded this via cable FM as KTAM’s studio feed was relayed to the local cable company who relayed it on 101.5 if you hooked your FM receiver to the cable feed. If you are not old enough to remember, hooking up the cable company’s coax cable to your radio was actually a thing; the line up from the local paper back then is below. On 99.9 on the cable FM feed (see the guide below) was KANM, a closed circuit student run station by A&M students…yours truly actually did a shift on it once a week. You will not be hearing airchecks of those… To oddly connect things, Alex Luke ran KANM and would go on to KDGE above in its early days.
As for this aircheck, it definitely is small market…but it also is what is missing in many small markets today: live and local shifts (even at night) where the DJs tell you something about what is going on in the cities they live in and a non-national playlist with a few “oh-wow” songs you don’t hear any more.
KTAM shifted from oldies to standards in 1994. In August 2001, Clear Channel flipped Tejano KBMA 99.5 to classic rock KNFX-FM “99.5 the Fox.” KTAM flipped to regional Mexican a few weeks later filling the void for a local Spanish-language station. Today, it still remains regional Mexican, but has the help of FM translator K261EY 100.1 to relay the signal on FM.
One other note: Back when I lived there in the late 1980s and early 1990s, KORA and KTAM had a big December community event called “Radio M*A*S*H” where the local air staff broadcasted from an Army tent for a week outside the local mall to collect toys for needy children. M*A*S*H stood for “Make A Smile Happen” in this case. Checking their website, it was nice to see KORA and KTAM still do that (along with its current day clustermates R&B KBXT 101.9 and classic hits KAPN 107.3/K272FK 102.3) at the same mall for what will be the 40th year of that fundraiser next month.
As always, the logos and other intellectual property belong to the stations. The recordings were made from over the air broadcasts.